Israeli soldiers attacked, Friday, the weekly nonviolent procession in Kufur Qaddoum village, east of Qalqilia, in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, causing dozens to suffer the effects of teargas inhalation.

Morad Eshteiwy, the media coordinator of the Popular Committee against the Annexation Wall and Colonies in Kufur Qaddoum, said the soldiers resorted to the excessive use of force against the protesters, and fired dozens of gas bombs, and rubber-coated steel bullets at them.

He added that dozens of Palestinians suffered the effects of teargas inhalation, and received the needed treatment by local medics.

Eshteiwy stated that the procession this week also marked the 69th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, when Israel was established in the historic land of Palestine in 1948, after ethnically cleansing, depopulating and destroying hundreds of Palestinian villages and towns.

Many protesters carried signs demanding Israel to implement the internationally-guaranteed Right of Return[PDF] of the refugees.

The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) welcomed today’s announcements that Dublin City Hall will fly the Palestinian flag between 15th May and June, this year, following a vote by Dublin City Council, this evening. Sligo County Council also voted to fly the flag from the Council Building between 15th May and the end of the month.

IPSC Chairperson Ms. Fatin Al-Tamimi, a Palestinian-Irish citizen whose family is originally from Hebron and Gaza, in the occupied Palestinian territories, said, according to the PNN:

“We in the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign sincerely thank Dublin City and Sligo County Councils for voting for these important symbolic measures. They are in the words of the motions themselves, heartening ‘gestures of solidarity with the people of Palestine living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, with the Palestinian citizens of Israel denied basic democratic rights and with the over 7 million displaced Palestinians denied the right of return to their homeland’. I’m sure I am echoing the views of all Palestinians in Ireland in saying that these gestures have been truly soul-stirring and deeply emotional on a personal level.

“In relation to Dublin, the Irish capital is a city that welcomed me when I first arrived here to start a new life, and I am so proud and honoured that my adoptive city will fly the flag of my homeland, Palestine, in an amazing act of solidarity with my people. We Palestinian Dubs will hold our head high knowing that the people of Dublin support our struggle for justice and self-determination.

“It is fitting that the flag will begin flying on May 15th, ‘Nakba Day’, or ‘the Day of the Catastrophe’, when we commemorate the forcible expulsion of over 750,000 indigenous Palestinians from their homeland between 1947 and 1949 to facilitate the creation of the apartheid state of Israel on 78% of historic Palestine. The refugees created during this ethnic cleansing and their descendants now number in the millions, and all are shamefully still denied their internationally mandated Right of Return to their homeland.

“It is also fitting that the flag will remain in place until the first week of June, which will mark the 50th year of Israel’s ongoing military occupation and illegal colonisation of the West Bank and Gaza. Israel continues to enjoy impunity for the decades of international law violations and human rights abuses it has committed against the Palestinian people, and so we ask Irish people to support the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign calling for an end to occupation and for freedom, justice and equality for the Palestinian people.

“Finally, we would like to especially thank Cllrs. John Lyons and Mannix Flynn for proposing and seconding the Dublin motion, Cllrs. Declan Bree, Chris McManus and Gino O’Boyle for proposing the Sligo motion, and all those Councillors who voted in favour of these historic actions.”

The full text of the Dublin motion [the Sligo motion is almost the same] reads: “Noting recent reports of diplomatic developments by the Irish state toward full recognition of the state of Palestine, aware also that Ireland accorded the Palestinian delegation in Dublin diplomatic status in 2014, the same year that witnessed both Houses of the Oireachtas pass motions in support of Palestinian statehood, this city council will fly the flag of Palestine over City Hall for the month of May 2017 in support of the above diplomatic moves and as a gesture of our solidarity with the people of Palestine living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, with the Palestinian citizens of Israel denied basic democratic rights and with the over 7 million displaced Palestinians denied the right of return to their homeland.” – Proposed by Cllr. John Lyons, 30/03/17

Criticism of US and Israeli ideology, as well as emphasis upon a one-state possibility, form the foundations of “Countering the Palestinian Nakba: one state for all” (Noor Publishing, 2017). Edited by Haidar Eid, the book brings together relevant analytical essays by several authors whose diverse viewpoints regarding Palestinian rights portray the complexity of identity and politics. Equally important is the manner in which the authors, through different discussions, expose the fraudulent illusion of the Oslo Accords which have tethered Palestinians into perverse subjugation. Without exception, they insist that a political alternative encompassing, history, memory, identity and resistance is necessary, as opposed to ineffective and futile amendments.

International legitimacy is perceived as an important source through which to articulate Palestinian rights. However, in his introduction, Haidar Eid makes an important observation between what should constitute international legitimacy and the reality of colonial legacy pervading political decisions which have contributed to the disintegration of Palestine. Eid writes: “If we still believe in the role of Western governments, especially those with colonial legacy, in playing a positive role vis-à-vis the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, we are, then, fooling ourselves.”

Eid also points out that the failure of governments to protect Palestinian rights requires people power, through global activism such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), to halt colonial violence and, in turn, influence international politics, particularly when it comes to dispelling the convenient myth of Palestine as a mere humanitarian concern.

This is not to say the humanitarian aspect is irrelevant. As Tania Reinhart points out in her essay which draws upon the memory of Edward Said, the political decisions taken in the name of Palestinians, particularly the Oslo Accords, have contributed to a situation in which “territorial continuity” has become non-existent, with fragmentation becoming ingrained due to other Israeli policies such as the Apartheid Wall resulting in severe humanitarian consequences. “The model developed during the Oslo years was of classical apartheid,” says Reinhart. The humanitarian aspect is a consequence of political violence, one that needs to be prolonged to avoid the global outcry which a second Nakba of overt ethnic cleansing would produce.

In the same vein, yet with a more assertive tone due to the subject of genocide, A. Clare Brandabur declares that rhetoric regarding the peace process is futile if the international community fails to recognise that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians. “Only discourse which recognises the genocidal intention of Israel policy has any chance of making sense of the trajectory of the history even before 1948,” she writes. The predictability of associating genocide with the Holocaust has excluded other genocides, including that of the Palestinian population which is carried out to maintain the Israeli settler-colonial state. Brandabur points out the inconsistencies of the international community in this regard, particularly the contradiction of criminalising Palestinian resistance when the right to anti-colonial struggle is enshrined in international law.

The book also deals with how Palestinian collective memory, history and two opposing strands of “intelligentsia” have shaped Palestinian anti-colonial struggle and the envisaged outcomes. Eid embarks upon a challenging discussion which shows how intellectual assimilation to Western concepts of Palestine has contributed to colonialism. The intellectual inspiration for this chapter is derived from Frantz Fanon, through which Eid argues that the concept of the “native intellectual” ties in to the Palestinian anti-colonial resistance movement. Eid also emphasises how Oslo intelligentsia became active proponents of the two-state imposition, while the “oppositional intellectual” has conceptualised, and advocated for, a one-state alternative. The former, Eid states, is void of a positive agenda. “Palestinians,” he argues, “are asked to accept our slavery and appreciate it as long as it has the USA trademark.”

Equally important is Ilan Pappé’s observation that Palestinian history and culture are proof of Palestinian unity, whereas Zionism relied upon co-opting a historical period in order to sustain the colonial narrative. Pappé argues that post-1967 policy was based upon exclusion of Palestinians to the point that Israel’s main requirements — which included impunity for 1948, restrictions on peace negotiations and the exclusion of Palestinians in Israel from any agreement — have obscured the prevailing imbalance between the coloniser and the colonised.

John Halaka’s contribution, which focuses on the conflict of identity faced by Palestinians in Israel, asserts that its policies have rendered Palestinians’ unified identity into a very complex scenario. From occasional assimilation by Palestinian living in Israel referring to themselves as Israeli-Arabs, thus assimilating the colonial narrative, to the ambivalent existence in relation to both Israel and Palestine, Halaka argues that Palestinians in Israel can contribute towards the formation of the one-state alternative due to their different experiences. However, they have been marginalised by both Israel and Palestine “in terms of politics and belonging.”

Eid’s conclusion is powerful, bringing together in a concise manner the strands of colonial impositions and the clear way to oppose the violence inherent in the Israeli settler-colonial state. “Addressing the question of the (post) colonial, in this particular context, is a complex issue in that one seems to be dealing with a colonist who denies his colonialism and argues to the contrary, and with a victim whose victimisation has been denied for decades.” The Oslo Accords, argues Eid, “ignored the existence of the Palestinian people as a people” and created the foundations for Apartheid.

A striking aspect of the book is the manner in which each unique contribution also gives a glimpse of the forthcoming debate, so that each chapter retains merit on its own and also as part of a sequence which does not shy away from assertions that place the burden of accountability upon Israel and the international community, thus challenging the prevailing diplomacy which has granted Israel unprecedented impunity.

It is clear from the book that all contributing writers are proponents of the one-state alternative. This collection, unlike instances where the one-state possibility is mentioned without any proper discussion of what it would entail, is adamant about the incompatibility of Zionist ideology with democracy, thus making it clear that any talk of one-state should not be contaminated by the Israeli narrative and thus become the precedent for the entire colonisation of Palestine. As Eid states, “True equality means the dismantling of the state.”

- Ramona Wadi is MEMO Staff Writer. Her article was published in the Middle East Monitor.

Israeli police have refused to grant a permit for the annual March of Return, this year, organized by Palestinians to commemorate the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” alongside Israeli Independence Day, Israeli media has reported.

According to Haaretz, Israeli police claimed that the event was refused due to inability to provide police presence necessary for a march expected to be attended by 25,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel and their supporters, saying that “it’s unfortunate that the organizers decided to conduct the march exactly on the day of Independence Day, when there are hundreds of approved events throughout the country.”

The march, which has been held for 18 consecutive years, is aimed at highlighting the internationally-recognized right of Palestinians who remain refugees or internally displaced to return to their homes and villages in Israel, a right which is upheld in United Nations Resolution 194.

Each year, the march is launched from a site of a Palestinian village destroyed by Israeli forces in 1948, Ma’an News Agency reports.

Muhammad Bassam, an attorney from the Israeli rights group Adalah, reportedly said that if the permit for the march was not granted by Israeli police, the group would appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court. “The police decision is very strange and raises concerns that the refusal to approve the event is politically motivated,” he said.

Others pointed out to Haaretz that the organizers had already discussed the march with local police in the Israeli coastal city of Nahariya, in order to launch the march from the destroyed Palestinian village of al-Kabri.

The Nahariya police had toured the planned route of the march two weeks prior, Haaretz reported, with the police already setting the police requirements for the march, leading some to suspect that the permit rejection was politically motivated.

The March of Return is usually held on Israeli Independence Day to commemorate the Nakba, referring to the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and villages during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that established the state of Israel.

The official commemoration of the Nakba is held on May 15th, and is observed by millions of Palestinians and rights activists around the world.

Some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their lands in 1948 and were scattered across refugee camps in the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Today, there are over five million Palestinian refugees who remain displaced from their original homes and villages, following the mass expulsion that occurred almost 70 years ago.